Overthinking, Perfectionism and Minimum Viable Products
What we can learn from Aristotle, Jeff Bezos and the average kindergartener
Once you have a well-developed idea you are excited about, what do you do? The most logical next step is to test it. The most likely step, however, if you are anything like me, is to think over the idea. And once you have done that, think about it again, and again.
1. When does our thinking turn into overthinking
At what time our thinking turns into overthinking is hard to tell. I think a good metric is to consider whether you are still making progress on the idea: Are you getting any new information by analyzing it further? If not, this is a good indicator that we should be doing something to gain further information. Getting the balance right between over- and under-thinking is probably a life-long endeavour: Under-thinking leads to mess, and overthinking leads to chaos.
For me, writing my first post was a lot easier than posting it. I overthought it quite a bit, asking myself questions like: Will people read it? Will anyone subscribe? What will people think? The first two questions I could only get answers to by posting the newsletter, while the third question will always remain unanswered (and thus is an especially useless one to spend time on). In contrast to deep thinking, which is driven by curiosity, and goal-oriented, overthinking is driven by fear, and open-ended. I believe it is a direct consequence of perfectionism. The perfectionism I refer to here is fear based, stemming from a fear of failure/ fear of what others might think of us.
2. Modern day vs. Aristotelian perfectionism
This type of Perfectionism can be distinguished from the ethical theory of perfectionism by Aristoteles, one of the deepest thinkers in history. Perfectionism as an ethical theory is closely tied to virtue ethics. The perfecting of human capabilities (e.g., seeking knowledge, pursuing artistic creations) is seen as essential for a good life. Importantly, for most contemporary perfectionists, it is not the outcome that matters, but the process of developing our capabilities. Fear-based perfectionism does not lead to us perfecting our abilities: It keeps us stuck, unable to progress. And most importantly, given that Aristotle’s aim was to develop a theory for well-being, perfectionism in this modern sense is the exact opposite.
Therefore, if we want to be perfectionists, I encourage us to be perfectionists in the Aristotelian sense. For me, when writing this newsletter this means that I focus writing as best as I can about topics I find interesting (and hope you do as well) rather extrinsic metrics (such as how many people subscribe).
3. How the average kindergartener beats us
Children are generally a lot better at this; They are naturally curiosity driven. I think this is nicely represented in the Marshmallow challenge. In the Marshmallow challenge, a team-building exercise, the goal is to build the tallest free-standing structure from 20 spaghetti sticks, tape, and string and hold one whole marshmallow on the top. Adult groups start strategizing over the best structure and finish building their first model seconds before the time is up. They often don’t once test whether the structure would hold the Marshmallow, assuming it would (though it often doesn’t). In contrast, groups of kindergarten aged children immediately start building the tower and placing the Marshmallow on top to see if it holds. On average, they test five models, increasing the tower's height model by model and building taller and more interesting structures as a result.
Two lessons emerge from this experiment. Firstly, we tend to become more risk-averse as we age. The adults didn’t want their model to fail, and consequently, spent all their time building the one seemingly perfect structure. Secondly, we often fail to test our key assumptions.
4. How to build minimum viable products
A well-designed Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can help with both these problems. An MVP is essentially the lowest-effort version of a product that gets you the highest amount of necessary user insights. MVPs allow us to experiment, collect results and pivot into new directions. To achieve its aim an MVP should firstly be low-risk, in terms of time and cost-commitment, as well as potential harm to third parties. Secondly, as Eric Rees stresses in ‘‘The Lean Start-up’’ our MVP should be designed in such a way that it tests our key assumptions. Asking ourselves what would have to be true for our idea to work is a good way to uncover our key assumptions. Of these, we should test the ones we are unsure about. Our MVP must not be perfect, but good enough to get us valuable results.
Amazon’s beginnings nicely demonstrate this. Amazon started with Jeff Bezos selling only books online. The key assumption he had to test was whether people would buy anything from the internet. Books were a low-risk starting point because they are fairly easy to obtain and ship, and come at a low price. His MVP was also good enough. Had the ordering process been extremely disorganized, he wouldn’t know why – didn’t they want to buy books online, or were put off by the complicated process.
Key lessons
Once our thinking no longer helps us make progress on our idea, we have likely entered the overthinking stage.
Perfectionism as a process- rather than outcome-focused striving to perfect our unique capabilities can improve our well-being.
A Minimum Viable Product should help us verify our critical assumptions in the lowest-risk way possible.
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Sources and Further Resources
Bradford, G. (2015). Perfectionism. In G. Fletcher (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook Of Philosophy Of Well-Being. Routledge Handbooks. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315682266
Marshmallow Challenge. (n.d.). Marshmallow Challenge Blog. Retrieved July 13, 2023, from https://www.marshmallowchallenge.com
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Portfolio Penguin.